Starmer’s New Plan Digital ID for All?

Keir Starmer has today confirmed plans to introduce digital ID cards for every adult in the UK if Labour wins power. The scheme, which is being quietly sold as a way to stop illegal immigration and tighten up access to work, housing and public services, would see everyone in the country issued with a digital identity stored on their phone or accessed through an online system.

The idea isn’t new. It is a recycled version of Tony Blair’s ID card scheme from the early 2000s, scrapped after public backlash over cost, privacy and civil liberties. Now it is back, wearing a digital face and being pitched as a modern solution to a decades old immigration system.

But let’s be blunt. This will not stop illegal immigration. It will not stop people coming here without documents. It will not stop people working under the radar. And it will not fix the broken borders Labour helped create.

Starmer’s New Plan Isn’t About Immigration. It’s About Control

Germany already has digital ID, and illegal immigration continues there on a massive scale. The idea that a card or app will somehow stop people entering the country or staying here illegally simply isn’t supported by reality. What it will do is make life harder for everyone else.

Under Starmer’s plan, every time you start a job, rent a property or try to access certain services, you will be expected to present your digital ID. Not a document you can choose to carry. A mandatory identity profile, logged in a national system, permanently linked to your status.

Let’s not kid ourselves. This is not about enforcement. It is about building an infrastructure to monitor and verify ordinary people. This is the beginning of a system that treats everyone as suspicious until proven otherwise. A centralised database of citizens, wrapped in the language of convenience.

The real concern is how quickly something like this can grow. First it is just for immigration. Then it is added to driving licences, bank accounts, travel, medical records, digital payments, voting. Suddenly your identity is not yours anymore. It belongs to the system that checks it.

It is not hard to imagine future governments tightening the controls even further. Real time tracking. Behaviour profiling. Automated restrictions. Once the system is in place, it will not be rolled back. It will expand.

And the most telling part is the silence from the usual critics. The same charities, campaigners and public figures who shouted about civil liberties when the Tories proposed anything remotely similar are now quiet. Because this time it is Labour. And that seems to make it acceptable.

This is not modernisation. It is state surveillance hidden inside a digital product.

Once again, it is working people who will be burdened. It is the law abiding person who will have to prove who they are at every step. The very people this system claims to stop will simply avoid it and carry on regardless.

So let’s call this what it really is. A control system, not a border solution.